It has it's roots in actual letter writing, as in "I hope this letter finds you well".
this post was submitted on 19 Apr 2024
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Iβm so dumb that for years I seriously thought that meant the actual communication makes it to the recipient without any issues.
thats a fair thought, not dumb.
i'm still confused by Rest In Peace. Do you mean I hope this skeleton/soul doesn't have anxiety? or that i hope the place the skeleton lays isn't at war?
It means that may your soul rest in peace, has nothing to do with the actual body lol.
oh thanks, so rest in peace means rest in peace.
If I'm not mistaken, it comes via Latin, Requiescat In Pace, meaning the same thing. The idea being that the person is only temporarily dead and will be raised back to life at Jesus' second coming. In some views, (which I guess would be in vogue at the time of coining 'RIP'), the essence of the person is alive and conscious in heaven (itself an abstraction yet real), awaiting their bodily resurrection. Some views take this further, that the person could be conscious and tormented in hell or purgatory.
So Rest In Peace is wishing/blessing that the person may be at peace and rest, while they wait to be fully alive again when Jesus comes again.
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More like, "Please don't get up and start eating people or sucking their blood."
To be fair, I'm certain that someone has written it with that as the intended meaning. It seems like the kind of passive aggressive thing some mannered British aristocrat would do.
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I started it in 1995 because I thought it would be nice to kind.
I read your original Usenet post in 1995 but, because you never used punctuation back then, I thought you were trying to say,
I hope you are, well...
and took it as passive aggressive. Long have I blamed you, internet stranger. Now I must beg your forgiveness and hope, if hope not be lost, that you yourself are, well, well.
I noticed a lot more people starting using it over the pandemic.
Annoying AF seems a tad hyperbolic, no?
Not at all. If it wasn't so bothersome I wouldn't have taken three minutes to post something about it. I hate it.
If this is all it takes to be annoying you either have the easiest time, or you're perpetually angry due to the most inconsequential shit.
More of the latter. When I'm dealing with the stress of due dates and troubleshooting things that aren't working a needed, having to read through literal paragraphs of platitudes only to find one sentence regarding the support request can certainly increase my blood pressure. Sometimes the verbiage is so full of shit that it just comes off as spammy. I've deleted emails from support agents thinking they were phishing attempts.
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At least it doesn't ask for a response, like "how are you" or "how's things?"
It's just an attempt to briefly acknowledge you're asking a human your questions, rather than an algorithm.
You're presumably capable of seeing and skipping the sentence without reading it, so go ahead. Nobody expects an answer, nor continued "courtesies" during back-and-forth replies.
Having thought about this, I think I will start using Ave like a Roman.
Ave Oxjox!
When people used to mail letters by post to stay in touch a common opening was "I hope this letter finds you well."
It carried over from that.
I use this when the tone of my email would otherwise be, where's my spreadsheet motherfucker?? It's nice to modify the overall tone of the email to something more friendly. I have a very curt writing style so I'm often concerned my emails will come off as blunt or demanding if I don't include a pleasantry.
I work in a very friendly, informal field so I find myself doing little pleasantries to fit in, email-wise.
I would love if my coworkers were more blunt and honest.
"Where the fuck is my spreadsheet" is very concise. It tells me what you want, it tells me what my responsibility is, and it probably tells me the level of priority the issue is for you. "whereβs my spreadsheet motherfucker" is similar but, depending on our relationship, I'd take that either far more seriously or more jokingly.
I have one guy I work with who speaks like this. He had to explain himself at first then I was like, yes please continue talking to me like a human. I'm more likely to trust people who don't hide behind pleasantries and are just themselves with me.
I think you're answering your own question here.
Your blunt coworker has to explain himself or risks being taken as rude by people who don't know him. You yourself couldn't determine if he was being rude to you without some additional context.
Without further context, you don't know how to interpret an email that says where is my spreadsheet motherfucker.
In both cases, you're saying further social cues are needed to determine if someone you don't know very well is being rude or not. Hence, why people emailing people they don't know very well in a professional capacity include niceties to convey context and tone.
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I canβt find this specific sentence in my inbox. So I guess there are some variations. Itβs just the same platitudes as people asking βhowβs it goingβ when greeting people. Itβs a weird form of politeness Iβll never really understand, but is just there. Itβs futile to try and change this, IMHO.
I always feel like the odd one out because I genuinely want to know these things and people just tend to brush it off ...
Dear OP, ~~I hope you and your family and friends and relatives and co-workers are well~~
To nip it in the bud it's entirely the influence of the overly polite English and since Brexit this has deteriorated (de-Tory-ated). Just saying π
Dear Tulip Fucker,
I'd like to express my dismay that...
After some trepidation I'll confess that I find these "hope you are well" also annoying though it depends who the sender is. What I find more annoying are the "OK, boomer" comments on the Internet. I mean what can you say after such a reply ?
OK, Boomer.
That's the intended effect -- a condescending dismissal of being condescendingly dismissed. Not much you can say to a clear sign of disengagement.
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I've only seen it as a statement someone adds to an email when they haven't contacted you in awhile.
That's the appropriate usage, in my opinion. If I contact someone I've had a relationship with in the past, I might say something like hey dude. Been a while, hope you're well.
When it's the first time a support agent from Adobe or Microsoft interact with me from the other side of the world, I find it off putting and disingenuous (to say the least).
I blame AI. I notice ChatGPT is always trying to put that into my emails. Maybe because of that, I'm also noticing it in lots of emails I get.
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One thing that I've found with junior staff is that they feel a need to be overly nice in their correspondence without realizing the interaction takes time.
I'm decades beyond being junior staff and I'm always nice in my emails. I don't care how long it takes.
I'm 1(one) decade beyond, and I'm super short and direct with a hint of familiarity. It also works, because it feels humble. It is humble, because you can't hide any second meaning behind "I do this, you do that, okay?"
There is a difference between nice and overly nice.
And I'm not talking about the time it takes you to be nice, but the time it takes others to process your niceness.
For instance, burying the lede on what the email is for in order to say "I hope this email finds you well". Use that space to get to the point so that the person on your receiving end can process the email quickly. If it is a request, say please but nothing beyond that.
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Itβs just a salutation. A pleasantry. Itβs a formal way of opening a correspondence. Itβs considered polite. You donβt need to put one if you donβt want to, but if your message is terse, it can come across as rude.
I only see it in spam. Perhaps because "I hope you are well" translates easily. Though I cannot name instances of me using it, I most likely have as well.
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